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Where do refugees come from?
Why do refugees leave their homes?
Where do refugees go?
How are refugees treated by host countries?
Why are refugees unwelcome?
Towards a fairer refugee policy

Who counts as a refugee?

Uzbek children flee the Andijan massacre © SandS / Eurasianet (Open Society Institute)

Mass movements of people across borders are often divided into economic migrants and political refugees. Economic migrants are seen as having left their homes voluntarily to earn a better wage, while refugees are seen as having been forced to leave for their own safety. This crucial legal distinction was established by the 1951 Geneva Convention which defines “refugees” as people who have left their place of habitual residence, “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”.

Refugees are entitled to the protection of the approximately 150 countries which have signed the Convention. So, while refugees are entitled to enter and stay in foreign countries, economic migrants often are refused such rights. People who have applied for refugee protection, but are awaiting confirmation of their “refugee” status, are termed “asylum seekers”.

Bhutanese refugees in Nepal © Naresh Newar / United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network

In practice the distinction between refugees and migrants is highly simplistic. Migration is never just “forced” or “voluntary”, but rather it is a decision influenced by push and pull factors. Migrants may be “pushed” from their place of origin by economic factors (e.g. extreme poverty), political factors (e.g. political repression) or social factors (e.g. sexual discrimination). At the same time, they may be “pulled” towards foreign countries – for example, by economic opportunity, political freedom, and social tolerance, or indeed by close family living there. International law is a haphazard attempt to define the point at which the push factors encouraging people to leave their home, often under enormous stress and fear, become so strong that their migration should be seen as forced.

The legal category of “refugees” is therefore quite narrow. Those who leave their homes because of extreme poverty, famine or environmental factors do not qualify. The 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention, used by African states, has a broader definition of a refugee – as a person who crosses borders due to “events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality”.

A woman displaced in Darfur © Refugees International

Nevertheless, if you don’t cross an international border, you can’t be a refugee. People in countries such as Colombia and Sudan who left their homes due to violence, but who have remained within the same country, are not refugees but are instead labelled internally-displaced persons (IDPs). The number of IDPs who have left their homes due to conflict has risen sharply and is believed now to be over 20 million. Millions of other IDPs have been forced from their homes by other causes, including the construction of large dams.

A further category is that of stateless people who have no nationality, a fundamental human right denied to possibly as many as 11 million people worldwide. Stateless people can also be refugees, if they fit the Geneva Convention’s criteria.

Where do refugees come from?

Afghan women and children refugees © ACNUR-España

At the start of 2007, 9.9 million people were classified as refugees by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the multilateral body charged with their protection. This marked a 14% increase on 2006, when the number of refugees (8.7 million) was the lowest since 1980, following a peak of 18.2 million in 1993 after the end of the Cold War. Afghanistan is the country of origin for the largest number of refugees and, more recently, many refugees have originated from troubled countries such as Burma, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. The current exodus from Iraq is increasingly viewed as the world's most serious refugee crisis in a generation.

The UNHCR totals exclude 4.3 million Palestinian refugees, the people displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and their descendants. These Palestinian refugees are under the protection of a dedicated UN agency, UNRWA.
Why do refugees leave their homes?

There are multiple factors which push people across borders. The major factors are armed conflict and the violation of human rights. The 1951 Convention’s definition of refugees implied relatively small, persecuted groups, such as political dissidents from the former Soviet Union. Similar political persecution now accounts for a large number of refugees, from countries such as Zimbabwe and China.

Armed conflict has displaced even larger groups of people. Historically, refugees have been a by-product or side effect of war: people have fled in fear of violence, or because they have lost all their possessions in the fighting. In these cases, the warring parties did not have the displacement of civilians as a major tactic.

Kosovar refugees in April 1999 © DPI / United Nations

Increasingly, however, forcing people to leave their homes has become a direct aim in war. Where claims to political power have been framed in terms of ethnic, racial or religious identity, a group mobilises itself on the base of that identity, and then tries to assert its right to power by excluding “others” from the territory. Extreme examples of this have been seen in Rwanda, with the Hutus and Tutsis, and in Yugoslavia, with Serbs, Bosnians and Croats. Such displacement can occur through direct violence, or, as happened in Angola, the warring parties may use scorched earth policy to force civilians to leave their land in search of food.

In addition, individuals may be targeted: for example, some Iraqis who have worked with the US-backed Iraqi administration have left the country after being ‘named and shamed’ by anti-government insurgents.
Where do refugees go?

Bangladesh hosts 28,000 Rohingya refugees © Refugees International

Most of the refugees remain in their region of origin – usually in the developing world where three-quarters of refugees live. Therefore, the burden of hosting refugees falls largely on countries least able to deal with it. For example, the country which has received the most Iraqi refugees is Syria with about 1.2 million, rising by approximately 30,000 a month. By contrast the US has accepted only 800 in total.

Other major host countries include Iran and Pakistan, which host many Afghani refugees, and Tanzania, which hosts populations of Burundian and Rwandan refugees. Many refugees congregate in staging posts such as Cairo, often with the hope they can then move on to the West. The Western countries which host the most refugees are Germany and the United States.
How are refugees treated by host countries?

States which have signed the 1951 Convention are legally committed to respecting the rights of refugees. This means governments must carry out their duty to protect refugees who arrive in their country, and to enforce the principle of non-refoulement (the non-return of refugees to places where their lives or freedoms could be in danger). Refugees also have civil and economic rights.

Saharawi refugee camp © Asociación Amal Esperanza

In practice, this protection has often taken the form of refugee camps. Conceived as short-term emergency solutions, many refugee camps have existed for decades. They often provide little potential for refugees to work, and lead to crime, ill-health and sexual abuse. Host governments have also been adversely affected by camps: the presence of Burundian rebels in refugee camps in Tanzania caused major discontent between the two countries.

The UNHCR outlines three “durable solutions” for refugees. The first is local integration. This involves granting refugees a permanent right to stay in the host country. However, governments in both the developed and developing world have proved unwilling to offer such long-term commitment, due to public xenophobia and to what they see as a lack of burden-sharing by other states. Where refugees have integrated locally in Africa, it has often been through informal “self-settlement”, with no firm legal status.

The second major option is resettlement in third countries. The UNHCR continues to resettle globally under a quota scheme, in which around seventeen countries agree to take a certain number of refugees each year. However, a relatively small number of refugees are resettled in this way. Although in the 1970s the US accepted hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees, it has recently been less welcoming to Iraqi refugees.

Karenni refugees in Thailand © Ng Yuina

The third option – currently the most popular with host states and the UNHCR – is repatriation to the country of origin. This has been promoted since the 1990s, in response to the large numbers of refugees living in camps. Legally, repatriation must occur only when the returnees’ safety can be guaranteed. In practice, this has not always been the case, for example in the return of Rohingyan refugees to Myanmar. Nor do refugees always wish to return – where “home" is a country which they were forced from, or, in the case of the children on refugees, have never visited. Attempts by Pakistan to repatriate over 2 million refugees to Afghanistan by 2009 are bound to be met with reluctance.
Why are refugees unwelcome?

The current preference for repatriation is one indication of how host countries have sought to reduce the number of refugees in their territory since 1980s. This aim has also been pursued by reducing the financial benefits and social services to which asylum seekers and refugees are entitled. In addition, some countries, such as the UK, have introduced detention centres for asylum seekers.

Palestinian refugees from Iraq trapped at Al-Tanf © Refugees International

States have also prevented refugees from entering. You can only apply for refugee status from inside a country, so many states have unsubtly tried to keep out would-be applicants. This has included placing visa restrictions on visitors from certain countries: without a visa, people can’t enter the country, and therefore can’t apply for asylum. To support this, many governments now fine airlines and other transport operators who bring those without visas into the country. International proposals have also recently been put forward arguing for refugees to be kept in the developing world, where their claims to asylum can be processed.

There are many political explanations for this backsliding. Strategically, while the US and Europe welcomed refugees from Communist countries during the Cold War as witnesses of an evil ideology, today’s African and Asian refugees are less politically useful. Indeed, rather than being a political benefit, refugees are seen as a burden on Western countries’ already creaking welfare states. Another explanation is that refugees are seen – by political elites and by the general population – as threatening the cultural and racial balance within countries. Recent riots in the UK and France have highlighted racial tensions: governments fear that influxes of refugees would further destabilise the situation. Governments have also linked refugees with crime and, since 9/11, terrorism. On these pretexts, several governments have introduced legislation allowing them to exclude asylum seekers who they deem to be security threats.

With Western governments increasingly intolerant of refugees, developing world governments have often followed suit. Politicians in these countries, as in the West, have played to public resentment of refugees and the social services they receive. Reluctance to observe the spirit of the Geneva Convention has therefore become a global phenomenon.
Towards a fairer refugee policy

Togolese refugees cross into Benin © United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network

In the context of refugees, there are currently two major injustices: the injustice suffered by the refugees themselves, and the injustice suffered by the developing countries who are expected to host them.

Firstly, refugees are too often viewed as criminals. Instead of linking refugees to disorder, insecurity and even terrorism, host countries should provide protection, combat public prejudice, and seek long-term and participatory solutions to refugees’ plight.

Secondly, developed countries should seek to share the burden of the global refugee population with developing countries. This means greatly improving their reception and treatment of refugees, and offering greater political and financial support for the work of UNHCR and other agencies. Tackling the causes of population displacement is an even better form of burden-sharing. Direct and indirect responsibility for some of the most serious armed conflicts and resulting refugee movements can be laid at the doors of Western governments.

Dhaka flood victims

A third injustice may become increasingly pressing. Those forced from their homes by environmental degradation are not eligible for asylum under the Geneva Convention. According to the 2006 Stern Report, such environmental factors are likely to become more and more prominent due to climate change, with storms and rising sea levels potentially displacing large numbers of people from coastal and low-lying regions, particularly in highly-populated areas of South and East Asia. Given the global responsibility for climate change, countries will face a moral obligation to share in the protection of these environmental refugees.

More radical proposals continue to be put forward – including that of open international borders – as population movement becomes an issue at the heart of debates over globalisation.



Henry Mance hmance@gmail.com has an M.Phil in Development Studies from Oxford University. In addition to freelance journalism, he is currently preparing a social entrepreneur venture La Calle in Bogota, Colombia.

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